Sir Bradley Wiggins has plenty of work to do to get back into contention at the Giro del Trentino after a blistering breakaway on the opening stage left him more than six minutes off the lead going into the mountains.

The race around northern Italy and Austria – a key part of Wiggins' preparations for next month's Giro d'Italia – got under way on Tuesday with two short stages, a 128.5km ride around Lienz and then a team time trial.

Although Wiggins and his Team Sky team-mates won the time trial, they did so after finishing as part of a peloton 6mins 51secs down on the leaders in the morning's opener. Maxime Bouet claimed the stage 1a victory after breaking away with seven others early on the stage.

The eight escapees were reduced to three on the steep Iselsberg Pass close to the finish before Bouet took the victory ahead of Josef Cerny and Michael Rodriguez. Pete Kennaugh was the best of Team Sky's riders in 11th place.

The good news for Wiggins was that those considered his main rivals both here and going into the Giro, principally Astana's Vincenzo Nibali, were also stuck in the peloton, and once the time trial got under way Team Sky were able to take time out of them.

Team Sky's eight-man squad of Wiggins, Dario Cataldo, Joe Dombrowski, Kennaugh, Christian Knees, Danny Pate, Kanstantsin Siutsou and Xabier Zandio recorded a time of 15min 20sec to take 13secs out of Astana. It was Sky's first team time trial victory since the Tour of Qatar in 2010.

Cerny's CCC Polsat team bettered Bouet's AG2R-La Mondiale squad by 13sec to see the 19-year-old Czech take over as the GC leader, 6min 5sec ahead of Wiggins and the majority of his team-mates.